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Sunday, April 8, 2012

MAY AU-GLA EVENTSWill the Wall Come Tumbling Down? An Updated Look at Church and State in America

Dr. John Suarez, National Trustee & Education Chair, Americans United for Separation of Church & State

The novel experiment of separating church and state in the United States - now well into its second century - has been a resounding success by most measures. The political model has been emulated since that time in most all modern democracies and adopted by most UN member nations as a universal human right. And yet, the challenges seem only to have grown exponentially in the US in recent years. With presidential candidates and US Supreme Court judges denouncing the principle, religious groups regularly granted special privileges and shielded by law from accountability, and an array of powerful and well-funded organizations actively seeking to use the power of government to promote their religious ideologies, we may now be facing the strongest challenges to church/state separation in the US today in all of that history.

Dr. Suarez, a national trustee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and chair of its Education Committee, will explore possible explanations behind this apparent inconsistency as well as review current hot-button issues in the US church/state arena.